Unreal People

(Warning: This review might contain spoilers. Click to show the full review.)This Twine game was much more substantial than I expected and much less.

You play as a spirit summoned by a woman called Baba, a fortuneteller, as you are ripped from nonexistence into existence.

You have the power to hop from vessel to vessel, both non-living and living, and it gives you the opportunity to learn gossip.

And such gossip you learn! A cold princess loves a dashing, straightforward man who may hold a dark secret. A monk does not believe all she says she believes. And so on. You gather secrets like scores in games.

Eventually, you also gain the ability to make dialogue choices, allowing you to wreak havoc in others' lives.

In the end, before plot threads resolve, [spoiler]you become one with everything, and then nothing[/spoiler].

I would like to see the rest of the threads. I did recently teach a class on Hinduism for a few weeks as part of a World Religions course; I didn't know too much about Hinduism before (besides reading the Bhagavad Gita), but why don't I try to apply a superficial understanding of Hinduism to this game that may not actually be influenced by it at all?

We can see this game as a representation of the karmic cycle. Existence is suffering, and the endless cycle of new vessels and their attachments, both the good and the evil, and the happy and the bad, are not good. Only true detachment from everything allows us to exit the karmic cycle and escape the cycle of rebirth.

(My apologies for the limited understanding of Hinduism and the game).

Overall, I'm reminded of the game Riverside, which similarly starts out as a normal, promising game and then is abruptly derailed in a shocking, out of world fashion. You can peek at the walkthrough or reviews to see.